Toward a Political Philosophy of Race

Falguni A. Sheth

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780791493984, 9780791493977
• eBook ISBN: 9780791494042
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Examines how liberal society enables racism and other forms of discrimination.

Timely, controversial, and incisive, Toward a Political Philosophy of Race looks uncompromisingly at how a liberal society enables racism and other forms of discrimination. Drawing on the examples of the internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent, of Muslim men and women in the contemporary United States, and of Asian Indians at the turn of the twentieth century, Falguni A. Sheth argues that racial discrimination and divisions are not accidents in the history of liberal societies. Race, she contends, is a process embedded in a range of legal technologies that produce racialized populations who are divided against other groups. Moving past discussions of racial and social justice as abstract concepts, she reveals the playing out of race, racialization of groups, and legal frameworks within concrete historical frameworks.

Table of contents

• Toward a Political Philosophy of Race
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction: If You Don’t Do Theory,Theory Will Do You
• 1. The Technology of Race and the Logics of Exclusion: The Unruly, Naturalization, and Violence
• 2. The Violence of Law Sovereign Power, Vulnerable Populations, and Race
• 3. The Unruly: Strangeness, Madness, and Race
• 4. The Newest Unruly Threat: Muslim Men and Women
• 5. Producing Race: Naturalizing the Exception through the Rule of Law
• 6. Border-Populations Boundary, Memory, and Moral Conscience
• 7. Technologies of Race and theRacialization of ImmigrantsThe Case of Early Twentieth-Century Asian Indians in North America
• Conclusion: Toward a Political Philosophy of Race
• NOTES
• WORKS CITED
• INDEX